


Reinventing The Wheel

by vriskan



Category: Alex Stern - Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F, First Kiss, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24427618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vriskan/pseuds/vriskan
Summary: Sometimes, Alex and Dawes are just two Yale students meeting in a shitty student-run cafe, and they don't need murder to bring them together.Or, the coffee shop au nobody asked for but we all need.
Relationships: Pamela Dawes & Alex Stern, Pamela Dawes/Alex Stern
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Reinventing The Wheel

**Author's Note:**

> Not sure how anybody could read Ninth House and not think it's 50% a slowburn love story between Alex and Dawes, so here we are. :)
> 
> Dedicated to a friend.

What catches Dawes’s eye at first is the flash of her forearm--

She’s wearing a dark sweater, large enough on her lithe frame that her sleeve slides down to her elbow when she reaches up to pay at the counter. 

The Wheel.

It’s impossible for a Tarot card not to call to Dawes. She lives and breathes fortune, even when it comes from shitty knockoff prints on a cafe wall or tattoos on some strange girl. 

Dawes can’t help but stare, surreptitiously following the girl as she leans up against the wall near the pickup counter; her limbs rest like she’s ready for rest, but her eyes tell another story.

“For Alex!” calls the worker, even though the girl is quite literally the only other person in the cafe besides Dawes herself at this point. 

Alex casually grabs her drink, politely thanking him. When she turns around to leave, Dawes ducks her head and stares at her screen. It’s one thing to admire somebody so beautiful, and a danger to invite her into your life.

Her dissertation stares back at her. The progress she’s made on it today is laughable, and now some pretty girl is buzzing around Dawes’s head, so she might have to just call it quits. 

“Do you like it?” 

Dawes’s head slams upwards, knocking into the top of the booth that she’s seated at. Her hand reaches up to the back of her head, but her headphones took the brunt of the impact. “Excuse me?”

“We’re literally the only two people here. I can feel you staring,” Alex tilts her head. Her hair splits into two perfect sheathes for her face, and somehow not a hair moves into her face when she does that. Her coffee is iced, and covered in more whipped cream than Dawes has ever consumed at any one point in her life.

“I’m sorry,” Dawes replies, swallowing, eyes flickering to Alex’s sleeve. How did she know? “It’s just-- your tattoo--”

“Obviously,” Alex says, face still inscrutable. “I didn’t think you were trying to memorize my student ID number from across the room.” 

Somehow that surprises Dawes into laughing, and it would be a mistake except that Alex slowly smiles in response. Without prompting, she sits down in the opposite seat.

“I’m writing a dissertation on Tarot cards,” Dawes feels the need to explain. It’s not like she’s typically such a nosy person.

“So The Wheel called you,” Alex says thoughtfully, then takes off the top lid of her coffee and takes a huge bite of the whipped cream. 

“Um,” Dawes says. She’s no dietary connoisseur, but her hands twitch as if she’s going to knock that entire drink out of Alex’s hands. Is that remotely healthy? Does it even taste good or is Alex just doing this to try to intimidate her? It’s kind of working, but it’s also a little...

“It’s specialty,” Alex says, as if she’s answering Dawes’s internal question, but she’s apparently the worst mind-reader in the world. Alex turns the drink so that the label is facing her, and Dawes squints to read. “I’ve got a monster metabolism, and it’s like eating a meal.”

That’s a lot of different flavor shots.

“I didn’t even know they served hazelnut coffee here,” she says, honestly surprised. She’s been ordering the cheap, weak coffee here for years and still remembers when they added a vanilla syrup. It had been hopping here for a week or two, as if in celebration, before the general student body remembered there are far better options across campus. 

“I know a guy,” Alex smirks, then takes another huge bite of the whipped cream. “My friend Tripp is a co-manager here and just orders shit for me like that.” 

“Mystery solved in record-breaking time,” Dawes remarks. She absolutely does not follow Alex’s mouth closely, and even more definitively does not memorize the way Alex’s tongue licks her lips clean.

“So are you superstitious?” Alex asks, which completely has nothing to do with their coffee small-talk.

And yet, Dawes finds herself relaxing. Anything nebulously occult or strange is far easier to talk about than the mundane. “Define superstitious. Do I believe in the supernatural? Do I believe in cause-and-effect? Do I believe in specifically supernatural cause-and-effect? Well, yes, of course, to everything. Don’t you?”

“Well, yes, of course,” Alex repeats back to her, but she’s not mocking. “I think it’s all a prereq to going here. Although I didn’t use to.” 

“What changed?” Dawes looks down at Alex’s sleeve, where she has started worrying the fabric between her fingers. It’s something Dawes might herself do right now, if she wasn’t absolutely fascinated. 

Alex in her ratty sweater and no school bag to speak of looks out-of-place on Yale’s campus, but her chewed lips with a spot of whipped cream still stuck there are perfectly suited to their corner booth at the dingy student cafe with the knockoff Tarot posters on the walls.

“Everything, right?” Alex asks. “That’s kinda the whole point of The Wheel.” 

“Sometimes,” Dawes allows, thinking of her dissertation. “Everything changes based on who is asking and who is answering. Maybe it’s about cycles-- a wheel always returns to the spot it started turning from, right?”

Somehow that’s the wrong thing to say, because Alex frowns at her. Still, Dawes continues. “Maybe it’s about seeing a different perspective of the same big picture.” 

“As in acknowledging more than your perspective on the same thing, or acknowledging more things in your perspective?” 

“Either,” Dawes says quickly, “or both. Or neither? It’s complicated.” 

“Yeah,” Alex says, “Life is complicated.” Then she takes a long drink. 

Dawes spends that lingering moment trying to decide if she wants to admire Alex’s neck, showing a bit from her curtain of hair at this angle, or Alex’s dark eyelashes that flutter against her cheek.

“Fuck,” Alex says, setting back down her drink which is now halfway gone. 

“Are you like, okay?” Dawes asks before she can stop herself. 

Alex looks at her with one eyebrow raised. “No.” 

“I see,” Dawes says, clearly not seeing anything at all on the same page as the girl in front of her. “Here.” She pushes one of her napkins across the table, then rethinks and slides another. “You forgot to grab one.” 

“Are you saying I’m messy?” Alex asks, amused, but she takes one and dutifully wipes her face. Then she wraps her hands back around her cold drink, another napkin wrapping around the base as if it is sufficient insulation. 

“Not terribly,” Dawes reassures her. She barely keeps herself from suggesting that Alex get some solid food to go with her pure sugar and caffeine. 

There's a moment of silence where Alex takes a more appropriate sip of her drink, and Dawes suddenly realizes that actually, she is terribly awkward in general and even more so around pretty girls, and also she had never even introduced herself. 

“I didn’t actually have a purpose for coming here and bothering you,” Alex reveals after another moment of silence.

“You’re not bothering me,” Dawes says automatically. It’s true, though. Her heart has been racing pretty much the entire conversation, but-- it’s not a bother.

“Nobody here really has seen my tattoos,” Alex continues, as if Dawes hadn’t said anything. “On purpose. It’s a weird, long story. I guess since I knew you were looking, it was a break from that.”

“A break from your self-imposed suppression of your tattoos and what they symbolize for you? Through a conversation with a stranger at a cafe that you will presumably never run into again?”

“Yes,” says Alex, relieved. “Exactly.” 

Things start to make sense to Dawes, but something is still bothering her. Alex is interesting, and clearly has some shit in her past, but the way she smirks means trouble. “You know…” Dawes slowly offers, “My schedule is rather predictable.”

Letting someone like Alex leave without trying to get her to stay… that’s what is bothering her.

“Oh, really?” Alex says, leaning forward.

Dawes fights the urge to lean back. Alex’s breath practically tastes like caramel syrup. It should turn her stomach, but instead she just feels butterflies. 

“Really,” Dawes says, trying to look into Alex’s dark eyes as if she has a shred of dignity left after staring at her lips this whole time.

“Then you won’t be a stranger.” Then you might actually know me. Then you might actually matter. 

“I can handle that.” The challenge is obvious in her voice. 

Alex tilts her head again, like she did at the beginning of the conversation. She’s still leaning so close-- closer, maybe? Her long hair almost brushes Dawes’s cheek. 

“Can you?” Alex practically purrs. Dawes closes her eyes. 

Alex kisses her. 

Fuck. 

Dawes pushes back into the kiss, hands aching to reach up and hold Alex’s pretty face. Instead, one hand grabs the edge of the table hard, and the other reaches over to Alex’s. 

Alex’s lips looked chapped, but they feel wonderful, and her mouth is cold against Dawes’s burning face. Alex has tilted her head, so they fit wonderfully against each other, and when Dawes goes to take a breath, Alex follows her. 

She won’t give her a moment of reprieve. Her tongue flashes, cold, into Dawes’s mouth. 

The taste is almost sickly sweet. 

Dawes gives in, sighing, and reaches up to grab at Alex’s sweater at the shoulder. 

That’s when Alex pulls back. 

They’re both breathing hard, although Dawes’s heart has finally slowed down, like this is the moment it was waiting for. 

Alex looks thoughtful, not pissed, as she carefully takes Dawes’s hand off her shoulder and sets it on the table. 

“Maybe,” Alex hums, “things can change, after all.” 

“The Wheel,” Dawes supplies helpfully. 

Alex smiles again at her, slight but beautiful. 

“Stay cute, and we’ll see,” she says, then picks up her drink. “Maybe I’ll see you in a week.” 

Dawes nods at her, face assuredly flushed. “I’ll be here,” she confirms. 

Alex gives her a tiny wave, the hand holding the coffee with its sleeve riding up. Dawes would look at The Wheel if she could get her mind off of the way Alex’s breath felt against her face. 

As she leaves, Dawes throws her head into her hands. Who even is this girl? 

Alex. Alex, with tattoos (plural, apparently, although Dawes really only saw the one). Alex with syrupy drinks and syrupy breath and at least one friend who works at this coffee shop and apparently many acquaintances who aren’t even allowed to know about the tattoos.  
Dawes shuts her eyes tighter. 

Alex with cold kisses, and a ratty sweater, and a carefully cultivated disinterested attitude. Alex who talks in circles around her, who let her fuss over napkins even though they had just met.

Dawes knows she won’t get anything else done today. She puts everything away, organized and orderly, and cleans up the table from what little pieces of paper and trash were there. She goes to leave.

Alex, who doesn’t even know her name yet, even though they talked and looked at each other and kissed like they were the only people on campus, nevermind the only people in the room.

Dawes knows and hopes and thinks it into existence. Change is coming. The Wheel.

At the least, next week, Alex will know her name.


End file.
